Jo Ann Emerson's jump puts spotlight on NRECA

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson’s surprise jump from Congress to the top spot at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association turned a spotlight on the group best known as the lobby created to help get farms hooked up to the power grid.

While that Depression-era issue might seem quaint in today’s Washington, the Missouri Republican will oversee an NRECA that now lobbies across a wide body of policy, and its broad national support base has made it a force to be reckoned with on regulatory and political issues.

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The group has lobbied in support of the Keystone XL pipeline. It has also weighed in on bills on health care, retirement, cybersecurity, broadband communications and efforts to rein in the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. Its overriding goal, however, is keeping utility prices as low as possible for their members.

NRECA poured nearly $3 million into lobbying Congress last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and $2.1 million in the first three-quarters of this year. The group’s political action committee also contributed $1.7 million to candidates in the most recent election cycle.

But behind those large sums lies a Main Street touch that makes NRECA nearly impossible for any lawmaker to avoid.

NRECA represents more than 900 rural cooperative utilities in 47 states that have a combined national membership of more than 42 million customers. When the group and its members come to Capitol Hill, they’re people who know the lawmaker’s district.

That base supplies a veritable army of 2,500 to 3,000 co-op members that NRECA brings to Capitol Hill every year, outgoing NRECA CEO and former Oklahoma Rep. Glenn English said in an interview.

“We use that. We use that extensively,” he said. That drives home the message to lawmakers that the lobby is focused on “what’s important to the quality of life of your constituents,” he said.

For example, Emerson told POLITICO that there were nine rural co-ops in her Missouri district and that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is a member of one in his Maryland district.

“You’d be really surprised how many of my colleagues actually know a lot about rural co-ops,” she said. “No. 1, they’re members of rural co-ops.”

Emerson will be NRECA’s fifth CEO in its 70-year history. Among those previous CEOs is President Jimmy Carter’s Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland.

NRECA’s immense and diverse membership can make staking out policy positions a difficult task, but for the issues it chooses, its members make a full court press.

Although in its heyday from the 1950s through the 1980s, NRECA had incredible political clout, decades later, lawmakers, congressional staffers and other trade groups still know to pay attention when the co-ops voice their opinions.

The rural co-ops don’t often ask for much, said Neil Brown, a senior adviser to Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.).

“They don’t often cry wolf,” he said. “So when they raise something, I know to take it seriously.”

The co-ops are all private nonprofit utilities that are designed to charge their customers just enough to run the business and turn over any excess funds back to their customers. But the co-ops, which were originally setup to electrify rural areas with government assistance during the Great Depression, now do a lot more than maintain transmission lines or power plants.

In some areas, the rural co-op is the utility, community organizer, emergency relief manager, gas station operator and youth program director all rolled into one.

Brown, for example, made his first visit to D.C. as a high school student under an outreach program run by an Indiana co-op.

Tom Vilsack is a member of President Obama’s Cabinet and reflects the typical attitude of those who surround “THIS” President. But they may want to pause before disparaging the kitchen staff (rural America = bitter clingers), because that very same kitchen crew might just say “enough” and quit. Then, how you gonna eat?